


You've Got Mail

by MarvelousMenagerie (HiddenOne)



Series: Imagine Tony & Bucky fills by hddnone [10]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Misunderstandings, Temporary Character Death, Thought Dead but Not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-06-13 06:29:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15358302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiddenOne/pseuds/MarvelousMenagerie
Summary: For the ITAB prompt:After coming home from a mission, Bucky is informed that his husband Tony has died...but it's actually some kind of clerical error. All the winteriron h/c! xoxo





	You've Got Mail

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at the imaginetonyandbucky tumblr. Thanks to an anon for the prompt!

Bucky takes a quick glance back behind him and catches the gaze of two SHIELD agents.

The agents turn away quickly, continuing their walk, but their shoulders are tense as they stride the opposite direction as Bucky.

Bucky frowns. It’s the first pair that Bucky has  _caught_ giving him a double-take, but not the first he’s suspected. Some he’d recognized as upper level agents.

…So he’s behind on SHIELD gossip, SHIELD gossip that has something to do with him.

He’s only just returned from a mission, two days behind schedule, but he doubts Natasha would be this out of the loop. Especially if she’s connected to the gossip, like Bucky must be. Maybe she took pity on him since his mission had been in the Alaskan mountains - because of course Hydra liked to lurk in cold, out-of-reach places - and texted him the details.

Bucky had already wanted to delay his mission debriefing so he could finally have a hot shower, and now he’s definitely going to. Bucky takes a right at the next corner to head toward the locker room - to information and comfort - rather than an agent that will ask Bucky to recount his every thought as soon as he left SHIELD.

His thoughts usually ends up following something like:  _Tony, Tony, shoot enemy agent, punch enemy agent, Tony, aim, fire, aim, fire, download hard drive, Tony, shoot, run, Tony, Tony, Tony,_  and sometimes Bucky recounts his exact thoughts about Tony because it’s entertaining to watch the agent struggle to retain their composure -  and also give Coulson a headache when reviewing the paperwork.

Though Coulson’s comment about a sex position Bucky had been fantasizing about trying had actually turned out to be useful.

Bucky doesn’t feel up to messing with SHIELD agents, not yet, but Natasha’s intel and a hot shower would probably improve his mood.

His phone is in his locker, and Bucky powers it back on as he unbuckles his tac gear. Message notifications light up the screen - from Sam (probably insults), from Clint (probably memes), from Tony (probably pictures).

Bucky thumbs open the messages from Natasha, and while her texts are definitely entertaining, they aren’t the type of intel that would have SHIELD agents giving Bucky double-takes in the hallway. He’s confused, but at least the pictures from Tony make him smile.

The latest photo is of DUM-E with his dunce cap in the corner of the workshop, clinging to his fire extinguisher with a blender of something, most likely non-edible, tipped over at his feet. Bucky can’t wait to hear the story behind that one.

Then his phone beeps with a voicemail notification.

The door to the locker room opens, and an agent steps in.

“Agent Barnes, you’re needed in Conference Room A34 immediately.”

The voicemail is from Steve, and Bucky’s heart races as he starts it. He lowers the volume to keep it quiet, so quiet only his enhanced hearing will catch it.

“Hey Buck,” Steve’s voice says. “Call me when you get this. Right away, okay?”

Bucky’s stomach drops, followed by a wave of coldness through his body.

“…Agent Barnes?”

Bucky takes a controlled breath. He is the Winter Soldier, the ex-Fist of Hydra. He will handle whatever situation this is. Even if Steve’s tone of voice is sending Bucky’s stomach on a plunge. Steve had been commanding, terse - and that didn’t mean good news.

He doesn’t acknowledge the agent. Bucky buckles back up his tactical vest and grabs the extra handgun he keeps in his locker. Then Bucky strides from the room, the agent walking double-speed to keep up.

Bucky opens his last line of communication and thumbs open his email. It hampers his image a bit, but it does mean that anyone in his path has to dodge out of the way, as Bucky isn’t even looking to make sure that his path is clear.

Hundreds of unread emails flood his screen - memos and protocol updates and overdue paperwork notices - but one catches his eye. One in all caps, bolded, and time-stamped yesterday.

Yesterday, which is the same timestamp as on Steve’s voicemail message. Yesterday, which is after his texts. Tony’s text had been three days ago, and Natasha’s two.

URGENT: ACTION REQUESTED, SENSITIVE INFORMATION.

Bucky opens the email and stops cold.

“Agent Barnes?” the agent tailing him pants, pulling up short next to him.

Bucky isn’t listening. Bucky isn’t breathing.

Bucky can’t even read a sentence, his eyes taking in only snatches of phrases.  _Sorry for your loss. Our sincerest condolences. Down in the the line of duty. Mission of sensitive nature. Delay on death certificate. Sign and return acknowledgement of gag order. Global security concerns._

_Decease of partner._

Bucky’s mind freezes, halts on that thought and can’t move past it. He’s stuck, looping through that phrase again and again.  _Decease of partner. Decease of partner. Decease of partner._

Decease of… Tony.

Tony, deceased.

Tony… dead.

“Agent Barnes?” the agent prompts again, as everyone else swerves around them. They are the fixed point in the middle of a busy hallway, receiving looks of curiosity and judgement and on a few agents - agents who must  _know_  - grimaces. Grimaces of sympathy? Maybe. Bucky isn’t sure he can recognize the emotion and wouldn’t want it even if he did. He doesn’t want sympathy. He doesn’t want pity, or platitudes, or flowers or whatever else goes along with… funerals.

Oh God. Tony is dead.

Bucky disappears, leaving the agent in the wake. He races for the conference room, for that all-important ‘debriefing’ in which someone is supposed to be breaking the news to him. Someone who got preempted by an email, a  _damn_ _email_ , and there better be some mistake because Tony is not dead.

Tony is not dead.

Bucky hears voices in the conference room before he reaches it, thanks to the serum.

“You need to take a seat before I pull you from this mission.”

Fury.

“Don’t try that bluff with me, Director. You won’t like how it ends.”

Steve.

“I don’t bluff. This is not a mission we go in guns blazing, so I need you to sit down and take a breath.”

“I don’t carry guns,” Steve argues, in full on stubborn bastard mode.

“But you know someone who does, and he follows  _you_.”

Bucky bursts into the conference room.

Coulson, the only one currently sitting, swears when he sees Bucky’s face. Fury is also there, trench coat whipping behind him as he turns to Bucky, scowl in place.

“Who told you?” Fury demands.

But Bucky only has eyes for Steve.

“Is it true?”

Steve’s eyes are wide and pained. He looks… sympathetic. Apparently Bucky can identify sympathy on someone’s face.

Steve steps toward Bucky, reaching out. “Buck…”

“Who?” Bucky barks. “How?”

Steve grimaces. “It’s always Hydra.”

Bucky takes a shaky, gasping breath, and then he flees. He hears Steve shout his name behind him, hears Steve’s footsteps trying to follow him. But Bucky lets his flight instincts take over and Steve didn’t have those, Steve had always been fight.

Bucky loses Steve’s in thirty seconds, and goes off of any SHIELD surveillance in forty-five.

Bucky has nowhere to run to, he just runs. After he hijacks one of SHIELD’s helicopters, he simply flies. He disables the tracking sensors and then just goes in a direction, flying blind.

Tony is gone. He won’t be waiting at home. He won’t smile when Bucky walks through the door. He won’t reach out for a hug, or offer a joke, or tilt his head up for a kiss. Bucky won’t fall asleep next to him, won’t wake up next to him, won’t… won’t get another minute with Tony ever again.

Bucky won’t be able to sit in the workshop and watch Tony yank the future into the present, one experiment at a time. Bucky won’t sit next to Tony at movie night, teasing Tony about why he hasn’t invented whatever sci-fi contraption is on screen. Bucky won’t walk into the living room only to find that Tony had shoved all the furniture aside so that Tony could ask him to dance - swing band, the polka, disco - anything and everything. Bucky won’t wrap his arm around the Iron Man armor and fly with Tony, buzzing the streets and skimming the skylights and soaring the sky.

Bucky crashes the helicopter, not caring to pay enough attention to land properly.

He climbs out of the wreckage, already healing, and sinks to his knees.

Tony is gone.

Four years. They’d had four years together, married for two. The ring finger on Bucky’s left arm had a plate of gold, with Tony wearing his matching ring around his neck. It hadn’t been enough, not nearly long enough. It never would’ve been, but… four years? After everything they’d been through, only four years of happiness? (Or 3.6 years, really because there had been that massive fight right after their first year anniversary)

How many days, how many months, how many years is Bucky supposed to face now, without Tony? Bucky gasps for breath. His tears don’t come, not yet, but soon enough a pinhole will open up in his current wall of numbness, and then he won’t be able to stop.

A streak of light catches his attention, and Bucky leaps to his feet when he hears the sound of repulsors.

Rage, a crushing wave of it, overtakes him as he grabs the small handgun at his back - the one he’d taken from his locker and is stocked full of ammunition.

It was the Iron Man armor that pulled to stop above Bucky and slowly descended, cautious and wary in a way that Tony never was. SHIELD had already put someone else in the suit, in Tony’s suit.

“Bucky… hey,” the suit greets as the armor comes to a halt on the ground.

Bucky raised his gun and aimed for the faceplate, right between the eyes.

“Whoa, okay, are we really going to do this?” the person in the armor greets.

 _Gag order. Global security_. Tony Stark’s life and death is a political storm, but for Bucky every bit of it is personal. SHIELD hiding and waiting until they could spin Tony’s death in a manner that benefited them, putting someone else in the suit to do so and sending them after Bucky… Bucky fires.

The bullet hits its mark, ricocheting off the helmet.

“Can we talk about this?” the suit asks, hands held up in surrender. “I mean, if you want a sparring partner we can do that, but if you get hit by a ricochet I’m going to be upset…”

“Get out,” Bucky orders. He fires again, the bullet pinging against the suit. “Get out of the suit!”

Bucky aims for the reactor, but he can’t pull the trigger. Even if it’s not Tony on the other end… Bucky can’t shoot the reactor, not knowing what it means, what it stands for.

“Okay, okay, I’m coming out, but if you shoot me I will never let it go. Just warning you. I’ll bring it  up during every argument, and it’ll be super annoying, and you’ll be annoyed, but I will keep bringing up that you shot me if you pull that trigger. So think twice, okay?”

The helmet retracts. The suit opens.

Tony Stark steps out, his eyebrows drawn in concern, his hands raised in surrender.

“Hi,” Tony says, wary. “Come here often?”

“…Tony?” Bucky whispers. He realizes he’s still holding his gun, aiming for Tony’s face, and Bucky lowers his arm.

“No bullet? Awesome, we’re doing great, really great. Let’s keep rolling with that, yeah?”

“Tony,” Bucky croaks out. Something that was going to be a half-laugh gets stuck in his throat, then it rips out like a sob. “ _Tony_.”

Bucky struggles to breathe. His body trembles. His body flashes hot and cold and then hot again. Blood and violence he can take, he’s dealt for decades in that, but  _this_  - Tony yanked from him but now back again - has Bucky falling to his knees.

Tony leaps forward, hand outstretched, but he’s not quick enough to stop Bucky from crashing to the ground. “Baby, you’re scaring me,” Tony admits, his eyes wide with concern.

But Tony is now within arm’s reach, and Bucky lets his gun fall from numb fingers so that he can reach out and crush Tony to him. He buries his face in Tony’s shirt, takes in the scent of Tony and workshop and  _home._ He’d almost lost this. He’d thought he  _had_  lost this.

“I’m sorry. I tried to be there. I wanted to, but I didn’t make it and I should’ve. I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry,” Tony says as he cards his fingers through Bucky’s hair. “We’ll get Zola. We will.”

Bucky leaps to his feet, gun back in hand. “What?” he barks as he cases the horizon. “Zola? He’s  _alive_?” Bucky tips back over into fear, cold and rigid, as he tries to quiet the tremors in his fingertips as he clutches his handgun.

Tony stars at Bucky, brow furrowed. “Didn’t Steve tell you? …Isn’t that why we’re here?” Tony asks, gesturing to the grassy field and the remains of the helicopter.

“They told me you were dead!” Bucky argues. “Was that all a trick for, for  _him_?”

Bucky’s mind races. Zola.  _Zola_. Bucky remembers him all too well. Bucky remembers the look in Zola’s eyes after he had first strapped Bucky down onto a table. Zola had been curious, clinical - he hadn’t seen a human when he looked down at Bucky, he’d only seen his next experiment. And then there were the memories after the fall, with that second experimentation, the finishing of the first. The arm, the words, the serum… Bucky wishes he forget again, at least that part.

Steve had promised Zola was gone, Zola’s mind erased with the destruction of those hard drives.

“No! What kind of stupid, idiotic… They told you I was dead?” Tony yelps. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” Bucky admits, heaving for breath. “Steve said it was Hydra and then I… left.”

Tony wraps his arms around Bucky, but Bucky can’t take his eyes off the landscape. What if he’d put Tony in danger, running away from SHIELD, drawing them both out, and Zola is around the bend waiting to make his move? What if Zola is already infiltrating SHIELD, the Tower, as they speak?

“Oh God, honey,” Tony breathes, hugging Bucky tight. “I’m fine. Nothing happened. Fury must have been on something, because seriously what the hell? And Steve just, what, went  _along with it_?”

Bucky swallows and locks the metal joints of his fingers before he wraps the arm around Tony’s waist, so Tony can’t feel the micro-movements that give away Bucky’s nerves. “We should… we should get back to the Tower. More defensible. Safe,” Bucky mumbles. He can’t get Tony killed. He can’t let Zola get a finger on Tony.

“Yes, but first there’s a certain Star Spangled Asshole to deal with,” Tony says as he unwraps one arm from Bucky to grab his phone from his pocket. “Then I’ll move onto Fury. And Coulson. And SHIELD entirely, the bunch of assholes.”

“Tony! Tell me you found him -”

With his enhanced hearing, Bucky doesn’t even have to strain to hear the worry in Steve’s tone.

“Yeah, I found him,” Tony interrupts. “Now shut up and explain yourself, Rogers. Where the hell do you guys get off on telling Bucky that I’m dead?!”

“What?” Steve shouts in reply.

Bucky blinks back tears, the ones that had been building since Bucky had opened that damn email, as the story untangles and straightens out. Steve had assumed - as had Fury and Coulson - that Bucky’s devastation had been because someone had already spilled the beans that they’d found evidence that Zola still lurked in Hydra’s systems. Bucky’s questions hadn’t specified, and Steve’s answers hadn’t clarified.

That email, that damn email, had been nothing but a mistake. It took Coulson to realize that the email should have gone to [j.bornes@shield.gov](mailto:j.bornes@shield.gov) instead of [j.barnes@shield.gov](mailto:j.barnes@shield.gov). Someone had died, someone on a classified mission, but it hadn’t been Tony.

Bucky feels guilt at his relief because now he knows how that someone will feel finding out their partner is dead.

But it’s not Tony.

It’s not Tony, and it’s not that Bucky didn’t know for almost twenty-four hours. It’s not that Bucky didn’t know because he had been on a mission, finishing up stuff for SHIELD,  _ignorant_ , while they kept from him that his partner was dead. It’s not that Bucky is nothing but a tool, an asset, to be used until his mission is complete.

It’s not Tony who is dead, and Bucky will always be grateful for that.

“Let’s go home,” Tony suggests, voice soft. He’s kept one hand on Bucky the entire time as if Bucky is the one who is going to disappear.

“Please,” Bucky breathes out.

He clings to the Iron Man armor the entire way home, and then to Tony the rest of the night.

“I’m here,” Tony promises. It’s as much of a promise as he can make, futurist as he is. With Zola back in the world, even Bucky isn’t going to make any promises about always being there for Tony. “I’m still here.”


End file.
